00:00:00
Hi, I'm Natalie Morales. Family bonds are, well, complicated. This episode took us to Chicago, where an immigrant family was seeking a better life in America. Tradition, greed, and ambition would lead to one and possibly two murders. It's a story that took us all the way to the other side of the world. A story filled with phony identities, twists, and twisted loyalty.
00:00:26
If houses could talk, imagine the stories they tell. About the families who live there, who love and trust and support each other.
00:00:40
It would be nice to think that trust and loyalty always lead to happy endings. But in the story you're about to hear, trust and loyalty got twisted into something monstrous.
00:00:52
and a young man paid the price after he stepped out of his house one rainy September night.
00:01:04
It happened in Bucktown, a trendy little neighborhood in Chicago. A neighbor heard gunshots and then the squeal of tires.
00:01:12
He came running and saw the body of 31-year-old Robert Odubain on the floor of his garage.
00:01:18
So right here. Yeah, he was laying down from two obvious gunshots to the head. Chicago Police Detective Bill Johnston learned Robert had spent the afternoon with his father
00:01:29
and had gotten home earlier that evening. It appeared Robert was heading out again when he was shot.
00:01:36
And the door was open. The overhead door was open. None of the neighbors reported seeing anybody coming or going, but they did hear the gunshots.
00:01:46
Detective Pat McCarthy had seen plenty of killings, working in the gang and organized crime squad with the Chicago PD.
00:01:53
When Robert was found in his garage, his vehicle was gone, and his keys were gone, his wallet was gone,
00:02:00
and it just looked to be a sad but true thing, another crime in Chicago. They found Robert's Jeep nearby, so it didn't look like a carjacking,
00:02:10
but it didn't look random either. He was shot in two areas of the head at close range.
00:02:16
Not direct contact, but very close range based on the marks around the wounds. So the next question, who was Robert Odubane?
00:02:25
And what are you finding out about the victim? I'm finding out that he lives with a young lady who he has known for many years, several years.
00:02:34
Her name was Catherine Suh, Robert's girlfriend. But she was out with a friend that night.
00:02:40
so she's nowhere near the crime scene that's correct she was one of the first people to meet
00:02:47
with police when you saw her for the first time how did she seem she seemed distraught and nervous
00:02:54
and um i asked her what life was like with robert did he have any enemies and she said well he's a
00:03:02
real heavy gambler and he owed a lot of gambling debts detectives decided to take a look at robert's
00:03:10
financial and business dealings. He and Catherine owned a nightclub called Metropolis in a suburb
00:03:16
north of Chicago. Kimbury was a waitress there. How did you hear that something had happened to
00:03:21
Robert? So Dave had called me because we were working that night. We were supposed to be in,
00:03:27
and Dave had arrived to the bar, and the police were there when they arrived. Dave was Dave Hersey, a bartender. Did they question any of the staff or interview anybody
00:03:38
to see if there could have been perhaps somebody at the club. I know I got interviewed a few times.
00:03:44
I think a couple of the other guys did too. We thought maybe some disgruntled employee,
00:03:49
possibly somebody that wanted exact revenge from either Catherine or Robert. We really didn't know until we started putting things together.
00:03:58
Police talked to Robert's employees, getting some basic information about the club.
00:04:03
Everything in there was expensive. They had definitely spent a lot of money to have a certain look to it.
00:04:12
You had a lot of regulars that came in on a daily basis. Mike Levito, who also tended bars, said it was a decent place to work.
00:04:19
The money was good, and Robert was a likable guy. And Robert was a really good person, a kind man.
00:04:27
Did it seem like he knew a lot about running this kind of business? I wouldn't say he knew everything about the business, but he was open to direction that a couple of us would help him out with.
00:04:37
The bar had been open less than a year, but Kim says there were already signs they had gotten in over their heads.
00:04:44
We got rid of the kitchen at one point and stopped serving food. Like they were pulling back in certain ways that maybe there were signs that things maybe financially were getting rough.
00:04:54
What do you discover there? There was some talk about possible drug activity, gambling activity.
00:05:00
All these things started bubbling to the surface kind of early on in the case. There was drugs in and out of the actual bar itself.
00:05:09
And I think that's when I started leaning towards, like, I'm going to get a different job.
00:05:12
Police still had a lot to learn about Robert Odubane's world. But they were certain about one thing.
00:05:19
This was a targeted killing. So was it business or personal? As they dug deeper, police would learn that in Robert's strangely tangled life, it could have been both.
00:05:34
Coming up, Robert had led a colorful life. Robert O'Devain was an interesting character.
00:05:41
His family described him as someone who reinvented himself quite a bit. And what are the odds two murders in the same family?
00:05:49
She was found stabbed multiple times in the head and neck, buried under some clothing.
00:05:54
The End Chicago police were looking into the murder of a young nightclub owner named Robert Odubane
00:06:12
The details of his death were simple. Two shots to the head in a lonely garage. The details of his life?
00:06:19
Well, that's where the story gets complicated. And what kind of guy was Robert Odebane at the time as they started to delve into his background?
00:06:28
Robert Odebane was an interesting character. Christy Gutowski is a reporter for the Chicago Tribune, which covered the story when it broke in 1993.
00:06:37
He was the oldest of five. And, you know, sometimes as the oldest, you kind of become the leader of the family.
00:06:43
But he really rebelled against that. He didn't want that title or that responsibility. He was his own guy.
00:06:49
Robert wasn't a college graduate, but he did hold a series of jobs. He was a hard worker, just a little unfocused.
00:06:56
His family described him as someone who reinvented himself quite a bit and was always searching.
00:07:02
As investigators continued to look into Robert's family background, they found little of interest.
00:07:08
Maybe they could learn more from his other relationship, the one with Catherine Suh.
00:07:13
Robert met her when he was in his mid-20s. Catherine was 18. She came from a family of high achievers who had emigrated from South Korea.
00:07:23
They had big jobs. Father was a banker. Mother was a pharmacist. A cousin, Byung-Kwang Seo, remembers how successful Catherine's mother was back in her home country.
00:07:35
If they still lived in Korea, I believe she would have opened a pharmaceutical company.
00:07:42
They had two kids, Catherine and an older brother. But tragedy came calling when Catherine was three years old and her brother was just eight.
00:07:53
He was hanging out at his friend's house from the second floor. He stumbled, fell over the railings, suffered severe injuries and died.
00:08:05
It was a devastating blow. Christy Gutowski says Catherine's father was so desperate for another boy, he gave his wife an ultimatum.
00:08:14
You need to give me a son or else I'm divorcing you. So she has this little boy, Andrew.
00:08:22
Investigators learned the family moved to Chicago when Andrew was still a toddler.
00:08:26
The father chose Ronald as his American name. His wife picked Elizabeth. They settled in this nice house in a quiet neighborhood.
00:08:35
And as they struggled with a strange culture and language, it was little Andrew who kept the family going.
00:08:42
Ronald's opened a convenience store. And Andrew stepped in as his translator and helped his dad.
00:08:48
He would leave school, go to his dad's convenience store and stay with him until it closed,
00:08:53
go home, do his homework, and start it all over again. But Catherine? Police learned she embraced the life of a rebellious American teenager.
00:09:04
She didn't want to conform to the Korean family lifestyle. Really didn't want any part of it.
00:09:11
She began dating non-Korean boys and going out with friends and, you know, not excelling in school.
00:09:18
And that was something that was not going to be tolerated by her father. Detectives learned Ronald Su beat his daughter more than once.
00:09:27
Catherine, as a young girl, was given a lot of harsh treatment by her father. Then, according to one story, Catherine and her father hit a point of no return.
00:09:38
Catherine had come home late and got into it with her father and actually fought back and drew blood.
00:09:45
And it so outraged her father that he doused them both in gasoline and was about to light them on fire when the mother intervened.
00:09:53
So I don't know if that story is true or not, but Andrew has told it and retold it several times.
00:09:59
When Catherine was about 16 and Andrew 11, Ronald was diagnosed with stomach cancer.
00:10:06
Andrew stayed by his father's side, and his devotion caught the attention of a local Korean newspaper.
00:10:12
Shortly after this photo was taken, Ronald Su died. His grieving wife, Elizabeth, had to carry on.
00:10:20
So she got into the dry cleaning business, and she relied on Andrew the way her husband did.
00:10:26
As for Catherine, with her father gone, she did as she pleased. Catherine and her mother fought a lot.
00:10:33
And her mother wasn't quite as strict as her father, but she had a hard time accepting non-Korean boyfriends for her daughter.
00:10:41
Within two years of her father's death, Catherine started dating Robert Odubane.
00:10:46
Soon after that, another devastating blow. Catherine and Andrew's mother, Elizabeth, used to own a dry cleaner here in the town of Evanston, just north of Chicago.
00:10:56
On the morning of October 6, 1987, a customer came in and made a gruesome discovery.
00:11:03
Elizabeth had been brutally murdered. Found in the back of the store, she'd been stabbed more than three dozen times.
00:11:10
At the time, Evanston police said they were looking at this as a robbery gone bad,
00:11:15
and no clear suspects emerged. But six years later, Chicago police saw it differently.
00:11:21
The way she was found, stabbed multiple times in the head and neck. Also, she was buried under some clothing.
00:11:28
It seemed more of a personal thing. Usually stick-up guys, they want to get in, get the money, and get out.
00:11:34
They're not taking time to cover up a body. Two murders linked to one family. A strange but tragic coincidence.
00:11:43
Maybe. But investigators had to wonder, were they connected? Coming up, the birth of a new family.
00:11:53
It was three young people and they were making it work And a new Catherine She was dressed in head black Very striking With red lipstick fur coat high heels
00:12:17
Chicago detectives had come upon a strange twist in their investigation of Robert Odubane's murder.
00:12:24
They learned Catherine's mother had been stabbed to death not long after Robert and Catherine started dating.
00:12:31
Catherine was 18 at the time, but her little brother Andrew was only 13, and the grief-stricken boy needed help.
00:12:39
Police say that's when Robert stepped up. They set up house and take over the responsibility of taking care of Andrew at the time.
00:12:47
Yes, and from all indications and from talking to a lot of Andrew's friends, Him and Robert got along great.
00:12:54
Robert raised Andrew like he was blood, like he was his kid. Yeah, Andrew seemed like he really liked Robert quite a bit.
00:13:01
Michael Goody, a friend of Andrew's, remembers Robert as a pretty cool guy. Andrew was telling me about how Robert would take the time to show Andrew how to work on this old Volkswagen.
00:13:11
And when they had gotten it, it was all old and kind of raggedy. And by the end of the next year, they had fixed it up and repainted it.
00:13:16
And if Robert was a father figure, Catherine became Andrew's surrogate mother. She was also his legal guardian, and she sat him down one day and told him to stop worrying about the family, that she and Robert would take over.
00:13:32
This was a new Catherine, a Catherine who was taking responsibility. He was allowed to just get involved in academics and student council and football, and he was very popular, and he did really well.
00:13:45
With the help of an $800,000 estate left by her mother, Catherine was able to send Andrew to a prestigious private high school, Loyola Academy.
00:13:55
His classmate, Pat Imponen, thought that if Andrew was carrying any burden of grief, he didn't show it.
00:14:02
You didn't get a sense he was struggling in any way, even after the loss of his parents.
00:14:06
No, and nobody really associated Andrew. I was, oh, this is Andrew, who has no parents.
00:14:11
No one knew him as that. They knew him as, this is Andrew, who's our student council president.
00:14:17
He's a funny guy. Here he was with some friends during junior year, working on a video project for history class.
00:14:25
We saved JFK! We saved him! We saved him! Okay, the point of the project seems a little fuzzy, but it's clear Andrew was having fun,
00:14:35
looking like any other happy, confident, even silly teenage boy. There he is! Can you give us an idea of how they were doing at the time?
00:14:44
It wasn't the sort of, you know, traditional family with the mother and father, but it was three young people and they were making it work.
00:14:51
To support this little makeshift family, Catherine and Robert invested in real estate and began flipping houses.
00:14:57
They did well enough that Catherine was able to move everyone to that trendy house in Bucktown.
00:15:02
Andrew went on to win a full-ride scholarship to Providence College in Rhode Island.
00:15:08
And by then, Catherine and Robert had opened Metropolis. Andrew would come in when he was away from school,
00:15:13
and you could shoot pool with him and talk to him for hours. Super nice. When he walked in a room, he had a presence to him.
00:15:20
And I'm sure Catherine had something to do with creating that image for him. But it was his bond with Robert that people noticed.
00:15:27
When Robert and Andrew would be at the bar, they were like brothers. Catherine wasn't in the club as much as Robert,
00:15:36
but when she was around, she made an impression. The little girl from South Korea, the troubled teenager,
00:15:43
had grown into a woman with a distinctive style, the essence of cool, according to Kim.
00:15:50
She was dressed in head-to-toe black almost every day that you would see her. Very striking, with red lipstick, black matador-type style hat,
00:16:01
her fur coat and her high heels. But more than that, she remembers Catherine as really savvy for someone in her mid-20s.
00:16:10
You know, this is someone who's made her own way, who owns a bar. These were things that you looked at and sort of revered for her age.
00:16:18
So you admired that about her? Yeah, and I mean, she was doing negotiations, sometimes more powerfully than Robert was.
00:16:27
Police heard how Catherine managed her business relationships. There's no doubt about it.
00:16:32
She could charm the heck out of somebody, especially guys. Kim remembers the meetings with liquor salesmen,
00:16:38
how Catherine used to serve them vodka shots during negotiations. Everyone seemed pretty drunk in the end,
00:16:45
and Catherine would get the price she wanted. But then Kim learned something else.
00:16:51
It wasn't until she started doing shots with us as well, the waitresses and all of the staff.
00:16:56
And sooner or later, Dave kind of pulled me aside and said, you know, be careful with Catherine. And I said, well, what do you mean? We're all having fun. And
00:17:05
he said, I pour those shots. Those are all water. Meaning Catherine's shots were water.
00:17:11
And so then I think it's when you started to realize how she really was manipulating everyone,
00:17:16
even us. You hear that word a lot when people talk about Catherine's manipulation. Police heard
00:17:23
it too and wondered if Catherine's talent for playing people had anything to do with her
00:17:29
boyfriend's murder. Coming up, Catherine Suh points to a possible suspect. Someone named Juan
00:17:39
who had a motive to come after Rob. But detectives say someone else had a motive too.
00:17:46
They were going to divest their assets. He was going his way, she was going her way.
00:17:59
As police dove deeper into the murder of Robert Odubane they zeroed in on the most important relationship in his life,
00:18:10
his personal and professional partnership with Catherine Sa. How would you describe the relationship that you all saw between Catherine and Robert?
00:18:18
I think when we first started and they launched the bar, There was a lot of love and kind of joint involvement and excitement around it.
00:18:28
But as the months wore on, employees noticed a cooling trend with the couple. And then they started fighting.
00:18:35
You know, she would leave in a huff over something that had happened, or she'd go into her office and slam the door.
00:18:41
And he would, you know, throw his hands up kind of in the, ugh, Catherine. Police also learned Catherine had become deeply unpopular with her employees.
00:18:50
She really didn't come off as a nice person. Kim Bury, who once admired Catherine, said she was just difficult.
00:19:00
For one thing, she tried to get the staff to gossip about each other. What do you think she was trying to get out of you?
00:19:05
It was different things all the time. You know, what was happening when I wasn't here?
00:19:10
Does Robert flirt with any of the girls? What was it like when she walked in the room?
00:19:14
I just avoided her. The one night at Club Metropolis I will always remember the most, a customer came up and ordered a wine spritzer and a rocks glass.
00:19:25
So when a customer asked for that, you make that. Well, Catherine walked by and started screaming at me, telling me, I'm fired for serving this.
00:19:33
That's not how you serve a wine spritzer. And Robert had heard it, walked in, stepped in the middle of it, sent me back, said, Mike, just go, you're fine, just go.
00:19:43
The investigation turned up something else of particular interest to homicide detectives.
00:19:50
Robert was seeing someone else. He pointed out his girlfriend was at the bar that night
00:19:55
and just to make sure that she was taken care of. I'm like, okay. Catherine confirmed to police that she and Robert were calling it quits.
00:20:03
They were going to divest their assets. He was going his way, she was going her way.
00:20:07
In fact, Catherine told investigators she was also seeing other people. According to prosecutor John Ennis, she was with another guy the night Robert was killed.
00:20:19
What did she say? That she was with a new boyfriend of hers and then eventually out for drinks.
00:20:26
And then she spent the night with that man. So it appeared to police that Catherine was happily moving on with someone else.
00:20:33
But then they got a tip that was nothing less than a bombshell. And it came from Robert's new girlfriend.
00:20:41
She told police something happened while she was on the phone with Robert, just minutes before he was killed.
00:20:47
They were talking, and then there was a call waiting signal, at which time Rob put his new girlfriend on hold and took the call.
00:20:58
It was Catherine on the other line. When he came back on with the new girlfriend, he said to her, she broke down in Lincoln Park. I'm going to have to go get her.
00:21:10
So Catherine was saying she was stuck downtown. Funny thing is, she never told police she called Robert that night.
00:21:17
More importantly, police knew Catherine was not downtown. They confirmed she was in fact in the suburbs with her new boyfriend that night.
00:21:25
She was lying to Robert. For police, that lie and that mysterious phone call to Robert
00:21:31
Shot Catherine to the top of the suspect list It indicates that Catherine was the one that lured Robert O'Doain to the garage
00:21:41
And she had no idea that he was talking to his current girlfriend on the phone When he clicked it to answer her call
00:21:50
Armed with this new evidence, police got Catherine to come in for a second interview
00:21:55
And as always, she made an impression. Very sure of herself. She wasn't some wallflower coming in, Area 5 Violent Crimes Unit.
00:22:05
About that phone call, she said she did call Robert that night to warn him his life was in danger.
00:22:13
She said that there was a Colombian, someone named Juan, who was in the rackets, who had a motive to come after Rob.
00:22:23
Meantime, there is no evidence to back up any of this, right? None whatsoever. Catherine must have sensed police weren't buying it.
00:22:32
So she tried something else. She says, I'm willing to give you however much you want and take care of everybody else, too, if I can get out from under this case.
00:22:45
She's willing to pay you off. She made the offer. And I said, well, is that possible?
00:22:50
I said, you're going to be charged with this murder. And she was. About six weeks after the killing of Robert Odubane,
00:22:59
Catherine Suh was arrested and charged with first-degree murder. There was just one complication.
00:23:07
Catherine could not have pulled the trigger. Catherine was nowhere near the crime scene.
00:23:11
So you're thinking, okay, she didn't do it. I thought to myself, well, who could she trust to do this?
00:23:19
and who would go that far to commit a murder for her? Coming up, lost. There was no Catherine.
00:23:29
And found. I showed the doorman a picture and he says, oh yeah, I know who she is, that's Kasha.
00:23:34
it wasn't a huge shock when katherine so was arrested for robert odubane's murder
00:23:51
at least not to the people who worked for her i really felt this was something she could be capable of because of her demeanor
00:24:00
way she treated other people. No, the real surprise came when police dove deeper into the phone records
00:24:06
and noticed someone's name kept popping up. There were a number of phone calls made back and forth
00:24:12
from Catherine to her brother, especially in the week preceding the murder. Calls to Andrew at
00:24:20
Providence College nearly a thousand miles away in Rhode Island. I called the chief of security at
00:24:26
Providence College and found out that he had signed himself out a couple days before the murder.
00:24:32
And then they discovered these plane tickets Andrew used under an alias to fly to Chicago
00:24:40
the day Robert was killed. He flew back the same day. Just went to school for about two months
00:24:46
until Catherine was arrested and then Andrew left campus. He went on the run first to California
00:24:53
and then Texas. He was stopped at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport by federal agents who thought he
00:24:59
was acting suspiciously. The agents figured out who he was, alerted Chicago police,
00:25:05
and put him on a plane to O'Hare. And when he got off the plane, you could just see it in him.
00:25:10
He was a broken dude. He was destroyed mentally, physically. You brought him to the station house
00:25:15
then? Yes, we did. And that's where the case came together in a way that still confounds
00:25:22
anyone who ever knew him. Andrew Suh, the good son, the class president, fully confessed to
00:25:29
killing Robert Odubane, his surrogate father. He freely gave up the information that he was a
00:25:36
shooter. And he confirmed everything the phone records were suggesting, that Catherine had been
00:25:41
calling Andrew constantly, pressuring him for weeks, telling him Robert wasn't the man Andrew
00:25:47
thought he was. He was gambling away all their money and more than that. Robert was going to
00:25:53
ruin their lives. Robert was beating her up. She even at one point claimed Robert broke all the
00:25:58
windows in the house and that he was totally out of control. Andrew says his sister insisted Robert
00:26:04
had to die and that Andrew had to do it for her, for them. She was all the family he had left.
00:26:12
So Andrew says he finally agreed. But Catherine planned it all, just like she always did.
00:26:19
She drove him to the house, gave him the gun, told him to hide in that garage. He arrived and he waited in the garage for several hours until Robert was lured out to the garage.
00:26:32
She told Andrew that Robert had it coming. But Detective Johnston says Catherine's stories about Robert were pure manipulation.
00:26:40
So that was strictly a fabricated story by Catherine in order to convince her brother to come here and do this.
00:26:49
Andrew was taken into custody, and even though he confessed, he pleaded not guilty.
00:26:55
Catherine also pleaded not guilty and managed to make bail. Over the following months, she dutifully attended all her hearings at the Cook County Courthouse.
00:27:06
But on day one of her trial, she pulled a fast one. We saw Andrew's lawyer arrive.
00:27:13
They were ready to go. And as we continued to wait, there was no Catherine. She just didn't show.
00:27:19
She didn't. Prosecutors dispatched their investigator, Miguel Santana, to find out where she was.
00:27:26
He tracked her to this luxury condo on Chicago's lakefront. I show the doorman a picture and he says, oh yeah, I know who she is.
00:27:34
That's Kasha. Kasha? Turns out Catherine had been living a whole different life as a woman named Kasha Kane.
00:27:42
Santana learned she been staying in that condo dating rich men and driving a Jaguar Santana made a beeline for the prosecutor Bob Berlin He had found that she had sold her Jaguar a day or two before the trial for
00:27:59
And he said, she's gone and she's not coming back. He was right. Catherine had vanished.
00:28:06
The judge put out a warrant for her arrest and decided to go ahead with her trial.
00:28:11
Despite everything, Andrew refused to testify against her. But in the end, it didn't matter.
00:28:17
The jury deliberated just two hours. And they came back with a verdict finding her guilty of first-degree murder.
00:28:25
Andrew opted for a bench trial. The judge found him guilty of first-degree murder and armed robbery
00:28:31
and sentenced him to 100 years in prison. Everything Andrew had achieved in his life,
00:28:37
All he had worked so hard for was gone. Catherine was sentenced to life in prison.
00:28:45
But where was she? Weeks turned to months as police tried and failed to find her.
00:28:53
Detective Johnston figured some national exposure might help. So he reached out to America's Most Wanted, hosted by John Walsh.
00:29:01
And they bit. If you've seen Catherine Sue, call 1-800-CRIME-TV. It aired in January 1996.
00:29:11
Catherine had been gone for about four months. And that's when the story shifted to Honolulu,
00:29:17
where a woman named Tiffany Escada turned on America's Most Wanted in the condo she shared with her boyfriend, Kelly Beck.
00:29:26
Here he is today. And over here, Restaurant Road. Beck now runs his own tour company in Hawaii.
00:29:33
He declined a formal interview, but he spoke to Dateline during a bike trip we booked with him.
00:29:39
And he remembers how Tiffany seemed eager to leave after watching America's Most Wanted that night.
00:29:45
Did she pack that plan? I left and then came back and packed just a little thing.
00:29:52
You've probably figured it out by now. Tiffany Escada was really Catherine Suh. She'd adopted another alias from two high-end brands,
00:30:01
Tiffany and Escada. And now Tiffany, a.k.a. Kasha, a.k.a. Catherine, was gone again.
00:30:10
What did she say she was leaving? Something happened to her family. That same Saturday night, someone called in a tip to the FBI in Hawaii.
00:30:20
But it wasn't until Special Agent John Pikus rolled into work the following Monday
00:30:25
that he found the tip on his desk. She's got a 48-hour head start on you guys. Are you worried at all that, I mean, she's going to be long gone off the island?
00:30:36
Yes. That's why I immediately went to the airports. No luck there. So, convinced she was still on the island, he plastered Catherine's picture everywhere.
00:30:47
I remember driving down the street and seeing her face on one of the signposts leading into a hotel.
00:30:52
The idea was to push her into a corner. And maybe, just maybe, she'd give herself up.
00:31:01
Coming up, Andrew's story. You don't want to believe that the one person that you cared about the most was the monster that hurt you the most.
00:31:13
And police now think they know who murdered his mother. To stab somebody over 20 times, that's rage.
00:31:31
Catherine Sa had fled her condo and her boyfriend in Hawaii Then one day two months later a call came through on Agent John Pikus radio
00:31:44
Hey, John, you got state attorneys from Illinois calling you, and they think they're talking with Catherine Suh on Oahu.
00:31:52
I go, oh, great. Okay, that's great. Catherine was on a call with Chicago prosecutors,
00:31:58
perhaps trying to cut a deal. As they kept Catherine talking, and Pykus tracked her down to this YWCA in Honolulu.
00:32:06
He spotted her inside, still talking on the payphone. There was this small figure, disheveled,
00:32:14
hair-a-muss, pants partially ripped, on the phone, and I knew it was her. Her capture was big news in Chicago on NBC's WMAQ.
00:32:26
Why did you run the first time and then decide to turn yourself in? because Chicago politics is very corrupt.
00:32:34
Catherine went straight to prison and now resides at this facility southwest of Chicago.
00:32:41
Andrew is housed about 140 miles away, where he spoke with us in his first network television interview
00:32:47
about his life, his crime, and his sister. Have you had any conversations with her?
00:32:55
There are instances where I've tried to reach out to her. She responded, I don't have a brother.
00:33:01
She hung you out to dry, Andrew. I still can't understand it, and I cannot explain it.
00:33:09
She was all that I had at the time. So I believed her, and I cared about her. But Andrew says there is more to the story of why he killed Robert Odubane.
00:33:22
It wasn't really about Robert wasting money or even abusing Catherine. No, this was much worse.
00:33:30
She said, I know who killed mom. And she said, it's Robert. I said, what? He says Catherine swore it was true.
00:33:47
She just kind of helped me. She said, you know what you got to do for mom. He says the pressure continued until he reluctantly agreed and boarded that flight to Chicago on September 25, 1993.
00:34:02
Catherine dropped him off at the house. She shoved a small brown paper bag into my hands and in that bag was a gun.
00:34:12
So that moment where she leaves you, you're in the garage. Yeah, I was there for a couple hours.
00:34:19
Take me to the moment then when he walks into the garage. Up until the very last minute, I was still torn.
00:34:27
And when the door opened, I pulled the trigger. You pulled the trigger not just once.
00:34:33
You pulled the trigger twice. Why? I think Catherine told me to make sure he's dead.
00:34:40
Andrew says he believed he owed it to his mother and his sister. So your loyalty made you blind to what your sister was doing with you?
00:34:49
At the time, yes. But here's another twist. Detective Johnston doesn't think Robert killed Elizabeth Suh,
00:34:58
but he thinks he knows who did. He says it was Catherine. She hated her for standing by as her father brutalized her when she was a child.
00:35:08
And then also there's that $800,000 profit she's looking at. And Johnston says it was clearly a crime of passion.
00:35:17
To stab somebody over 20 times, that's rage. Following Elizabeth murder Evanston police told reporters they did look at Catherine as a possible suspect but she had an alibi And that important because it brings us back to Robert
00:35:36
Robert O'Dobain was Catherine's sole alibi. He covered for her and said that he was with her,
00:35:44
when according to one of his friends later, he wasn't with her at the time of the murder.
00:35:50
Detective Johnston thinks that was the real motive behind Robert's murder. I personally don't think she could allow him to go out there on his own
00:36:01
with this deadly secret that he covered for her at the time of her mother's murder.
00:36:08
During her police interrogation, Catherine flat out denied killing her mother. But now Andrew thinks she probably did it.
00:36:16
You don't want to believe that the one person that you cared about the most was the monster that hurt you the most and hurt your mother the most.
00:36:30
Robert couldn't have done this because there was so much brutality in that. And the only person that would have possibly hated my mother as much as that was my sister.
00:36:44
Catherine Suh never responded to our request for an interview, and no one was ever charged in Elizabeth Suh's murder,
00:36:51
although Evanston police have recently assigned a detective to take a fresh look at the case.
00:36:58
Meanwhile, Andrew, who has no family to turn to for help, does have some people in his corner.
00:37:04
So, Andrew, so we have a couple questions we want to talk to you about. Okay. Attorneys Kerry Hogan and Alicia Hawley have been working pro bono for Andrew's release for almost two decades.
00:37:16
He was such a stand-up guy, and then all of a sudden there's this moment in time that sort of changes everything.
00:37:21
They cite Andrew's clean record in prison, and believe he has support from members of the Korean community who have attended his hearings.
00:37:30
He committed murder. A terrible crime. I mean, he was only 19 at the time, but yet he still knew what he was doing.
00:37:37
Absolutely. He has never denied what he did was terrible, and he has terrible remorse for what he did.
00:37:44
What he did to Robert and to Robert's family. In all this time, have you reached out to them?
00:37:51
Yes, I reached out to them and I apologized wholeheartedly. Did you hear back from Robert's family?
00:37:57
No, I did not. And do you understand the reasons perhaps why? Of course. Andrew, who has worked a number of prison jobs, isn't up for parole until 2032.
00:38:10
But a new Illinois statute says that if a person under the age of 21 commits a murder,
00:38:15
they could be eligible for parole after serving 20 years. Andrew has served more than 26 years.
00:38:23
His attorneys plan to ask the court to apply the statute to Andrew retroactively.
00:38:29
I hope I've earned my way back to having a second chance. But Robert and his family, they're not getting a second chance.
00:38:37
Do you think about that? Yes. And I hurt them, and I know it. I know Robert will never get a second chance.
00:38:49
Neither will Elizabeth Suh. She and her husband came to America inspired by the immigrants' dream
00:38:56
that if they stuck together, worked hard, and persevered, they could build a better life.
00:39:02
But a twisted sense of loyalty and tradition destroyed this family and their dream
00:39:08
before it could ever come true.